GAME OF "THRONES"

Moderator's Note: to read the Metropolitan's latest letter, CLICK HERE

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Well, well, well! Once again you "move the goalposts", your Eminence. One would think that by now we would know you don't intend to take your heavy boot off this community's throat. Yet, apparently, hope springs eternal!

We had a General Assembly recently that VOTED, barely, to succumb to your blackmail, pay your striking priests backpay for not working, and keep the three we cannot afford; we did vote for TWO priests' salaries, asking that you transfer one as soon as possible.

Prior to this assembly, you came here and told us, according to those damnable UPRs, that WE decide. We know, and you prove continually, it's not true.

But, we keep playing by your rules that continue to set up an utterly uneven playing field, and no longer wonder why the results are so predictable.

And we are further involved in your "Game of Thrones" with the Archbishop, the Synod, and for all we know, the Patriarch. Tragically, we, and especially our kids - their future - are but pawns in this game.

In this game of thrones you say:

To heck with Patriarchate, and of course, to heck with your supposed "first among equals" whose representatives told our leaders, "oh, bring back the striking priests and it will be easier to get this "straightened out"." Again we followed that advice, forgetting of course that you are always there to thwart any reasonable solution from any source that might get this community back on its feet.

And now, surprise, you're demanding (read, BLACKMAILING - AGAIN) that before you will even consider removing the third clergy salary, we MUST return the HCF funds back into sole oversight of the Parish Council. 

What guarantees us in your ongoing cat-and-mouse ploys that should we do that, you will not, yet again, dismiss still another elected Parish Council not to your liking, and yet again put in your favored anointed appointed, and do as you will with those funds? We certainly do not believe you when you say that the purpose for which they were donated will be honored. Too many of the splitters at the last parish assembly suggested that the original donors should allow them to be used for emergency purposes, such as paying for overpaid striking priests if money is tight.

Finally, when you say to us that even the devil can quote scripture:

ΕΞ  ΙΔΙΩΝ ΚΡΙΝΕΤΕ, Δέσποτα?